South Park
South Park is an American animated sitcom created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics. The ongoing narrative revolves around four boys—Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman and Kenny McCormick—and their bizarre adventures in and around the titular Colorado town. In the 2004 documentary "The 100 Greatest Cartoons" South Park was placed at #3, just behind The Simpsons and Tom and Jerry. It is the longest-lasting cable TV series in America, not counting talk shows and news programs. South Park is currently contracted to continue through 2011, though Matt and Trey claim to be 'tired' of making the show. Parker and Stone, who met in college, developed the show from two animated shorts they created in 1992 and 1995. The latter became one of the first Internet viral videos, which ultimately led to its production as a series. South Park debuted in August 1997 with great success, consistently earning the highest ratings of any basic cable program. Subsequent ratings have varied, but the show remains Comedy Central's highest rated and longest running program. Originally produced by cutout animation, each episode is now created with computer software that emulates the show's distinct style. Episodes are typically written and produced during the week preceding its broadcast, with the vast majority of shows being written, directed, and acted by Parker and Stone. After the first couple of seasons, Parker became the only credited writer and director. As of 2010update, a total of 209 episodes have aired during the show's fourteen seasons. Parker and Stone are under contract to produce 14 new episodes in 2011. The new season is scheduled to premiere on April 27, 2011. Following the early success of the series, the feature length musical film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut had a widespread theatrical release in June 1999. South Park has also received numerous media awards, including four Primetime Emmy Awards. The show has also garnered a Peabody Award for Comedy Central. Characters *Eric Cartman *Stan Marsh *Kyle Broflovski *Kenny McCormick *Wendy Testaburger *Bebe Stevens *Craig Tucker *Tweek Tweak *Clyde Donovan *Jimmy Valmer *Butters Stotch Animation The show's style of animation is inspired by the paper cut-out cartoons made by Terry Gilliam for Monty Python's Flying Circus, of which Parker and Stone have been lifelong fans. Construction paper and traditional stop motion cutout animation techniques were used in the original animated shorts and in the pilot episode. Subsequent episodes have been produced by computer animation, providing a similar look to the originals while requiring a fraction of the time to produce. Before computer artists begin animating an episode, a series of animatics drawn in Toon Boom are provided by the show's storyboard artists. The characters and objects are composed of simple geometrical shapes and primary colors. Most child characters are the same size and shape, and are distinguished by their clothing and headwear. Characters are mostly presented two-dimensionally and from only one angle. Their movements are animated in an intentionally jerky fashion, as they are purposely not offered the same free range of motion associated with hand-drawn characters. Occasionally, some non-fictional characters are depicted with photographic cutouts of their actual head and face in lieu of a face reminiscent of the show's traditional style. Canadians on the show are often portrayed in an even more minimalist fashion; they have simple beady eyes, and the top halves of their heads simply flap up and down when the characters speak. When the show began using computers, the cardboard cutouts were scanned and re-drawn with CorelDRAW, then imported into PowerAnimator, which was used with SGI workstations to animate the characters. The workstations were linked to a 54-processor render farm that could render 10 to 15 shots an hour. Beginning with season five, the animators began using Maya instead of PowerAnimator. The studio now runs a 120-processor render farm that can produce 30 or more shots an hour. PowerAnimator and Maya are high-end programs mainly used for 3D computer graphics, while co-producer and former animation director, Eric Stough, notes that PowerAnimator was initially chosen because its features helped animators retain the show's "homemade" look. PowerAnimator was also used for making some of the show's special effects, which are now created using Motion, a newer graphics program created by Apple, Inc. for their Mac OS X operating system. The show's visual quality has improved in recent seasons, though several other techniques are used to intentionally preserve the cheap cutout animation look. A few episodes feature sections of live-action footage, while others have incorporated other styles of animation. Portions of the season eight (2004) premiere "Good Times with Weapons" are done in anime style, while the season 10 episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" is done partly in machinima. The season 12 episode "Major Boobage", an homage to the 1981 animated film Heavy Metal, implements scenes accomplished with rotoscoping. Since the beginning of season 13 (2009) the show has been broadcast in high definition and presented in widescreen, and season 12 was released in high definition on Blu-ray Disc format. Category:South Park Category:Cartoons Category:Comedy Central Category:Adult Shows Category:Sherey maras Category:Matt moca